On
a July 06:2002 Por segunda ocasión, el Tribunal Estatal Electoral del estado
de Chihuahua resuelve anular las elecciones para Alcalde en Ciudad Juárez,
en las que el panista Jesús Alfredo Delgado había obtenido por segunda
vez el triunfo. Contra el voto del magistrado Jesús Salcido, el magistrado
presidente del TEE, José Rodríguez Anchondo, resolvió la impugnación
hecha por la Alianza Unidos por Juárez, de mayoría priísta. Con este
fallo, el PAN aún puede impugnar esta decisión ante el Tribunal Federal
Electoral. En los comicios extraordinarios del 12 mayo, durante el conteo,
fueron anulados 10 mil 700 votos, lo que provocó suspicacias entre los
representantes de la Alianza Unidos por Juárez, por lo que impugnaron
el triunfo del candidato del PAN. The previous mayoral vote was held
in July 2001. The PAN's victory then was annulled because it ran TV and
radio spots for its candidates during a blackout period in Ciudad Juarez
and across the border in El Paso, Texas.2002 At a gasoline station in Inglewood, California, Black motorist
Coby Chavis Jackson, is stopped by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies.
Inglewood police arrived as backup, and White policeman Jeremy Morse
questions the motorist about his suspended driver's license and expired
license plates. The motorist's mentally retarded son, Donovan Jackson,
16, reacts in a way that angers the policeman who handcuffs the boy.
At this point, in a motel room across the street, Mitchell Crooks, 27,
notices the commotion and starts videotaping it. The tape shows Morse
slamming Donovan head first into a police car and slugging him in the
face as other policemen converge. [a still from the video >][MORE
VIDEO STILLS] After the news comes out, several persons would complain
that Morse had brutalized them, including Nelson Williams who would say
that, on 23 June 2002, Morse and other policemen had beaten him so badly
that he fell into a coma. On 11 July 2000 Mitchell Crooks is arrested
on pre-existing Placer County warrants for petty theft and driving under
the influence of alcohol with a hit-and-run. 2001 Consistent with his past statements, Pope John Paul II says:
Restrictive economic measures imposed from outside are unjust and
ethically unacceptable." This time it is to the US embargo against Cuba
that he refers.2000 The German parliament offered a formal apology to Nazi-era
slave and forced laborers as it passed a bill setting up a $5 billion
compensation fund.2000 The body of 19-year-old Cory Erving, son of basketball star
Julius "Dr. J" Erving, is found in his car at the bottom of a Florida
pond; he'd been missing since May 28.1997 Los restos del guerrillero Ernesto
"Che" Guevara aparecen en una fosa común de Vallegrande (Bolivia).
1996. US President Clinton announced the biggest changes in the
rules governing meat and poultry safety in 90 years.

1995 IBM buys Lotus. In a remarkably
swift deal, Lotus accepted a hostile takeover bid launched by
IBM the previous day.
IBM pays $3.52 billion for the company, which had risen
on the strength of its Lotus 1-2-3 database in the early 1980s
and later developed the successful Lotus Notes groupware. The
deal is the largest takeover of a software company to date.

1981 Dupont
diversifies...(and years later will divests)
^top^
Though the Dupont
Company was hardly on the verge of oblivion, the 1970s witnessed
the chemical king beginning to sweat a bit under the strain
of international competition. By the dawn of the 1980s, Dupont
was taking serious action to stave off the pack. Along with
beefing up its marketing efforts, the company looked to bolster
its bottom line through diversification. These efforts came
to fruition on 06 July 1981, as Dupont officials announced plans
to merge with Houston-based oil and energy titan, Conoco
Inc. Valued at between $6.5 and $7 billion, the deal then
stood as the single biggest merger in U.S. corporate history.
Despite the rather hefty outlay
for Conoco, Dupont didn't stop diversifying: throughout the
decade, the company spent a total of $10 billion to seal a heady
series of acquisitions and joint ventures. But, as the 1980s
melted into a new decade, Dupont's strategy shifted; by the
mid-1990s, the company was ready to close the books on its splashy
dalliance with the energy industry. In 1998, Dupont unveiled
plans to gradually divest itself of Conoco via offerings to
the public and its shareholders alike.

1976 Women inducted into U.S.
Naval Academy^top^
In Annapolis, Maryland, the United
States Naval Academy admits women for the first time in its
history with the induction of eighty-one female midshipmen.
In May of 1980, Elizabeth Anne Rowe became the first female
member of the class to graduate, and four years later, Kristine
Holderied became the first female midshipman to graduate at
the top of her class. On October 10, 1845, the U.S. Naval Academy
opened in Annapolis, Maryland, with fifty midshipmen students
and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850,
the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery
and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French.
The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in
1850, and a new curriculum went into effect requiring midshipmen
to study at the Academy for four years and to train aboard ships
each summer--the basic format that remains at the academy to
this day.

1967 Newborn
Biafra fights for its life ^top^
Five weeks after the breakaway
state of Biafra declared its independence from Nigeria, civil
war breaks out between Biafran and Nigerian government forces.
In 1966, six years after Nigeria won its independence, the Muslim
Hausas in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos
in the region, prompting tens of thousands of Igbos to flee
to the east, where their people were the dominant ethnic group.
The Igbos doubted that Nigeria's
oppressive military government would allow them to develop,
or even survive, and so on May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel
Chukwuemeka Ojukwu and other Igbo and non-Igbo representatives
of the area established the Republic of Biafra, comprising the
East-Central, South-Eastern, and Rivers states of Nigeria. After
diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country,
war between Nigeria and Biafra breaks out. Ojukwu's forces make
some initial advances, but Nigeria's superior military would
gradually reduce the territory under Biafran control.
The breakaway state lost its
oil fields--its main source of revenue--and without the funds
to import food, at least a million of its civilians died as
a result of severe malnutrition. With the exception of a few
African states, the international community largely ignored
the plight of the Biafran people. On January 11, 1970, Nigerian
forces captured the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the
last Biafran strongholds, and Biafran leader Ojukwu was forced
to flee to the Ivory Coast. Four days later, on January 15,
1970, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria.

1964 Viet Cong attack US Special
Forces at Nam Dong^top^
At Nam Dong in the northern highlands
of South Vietnam, an estimated 500-man Viet Cong battalion attacks
a US Special Forces outpost. During a bitter battle, Capt. Roger
C. Donlon, commander of the Special Forces A-Team, rallied his
troops, treated the wounded, and directed defenses although
he himself was wounded several times. After five hours of fighting,
the Viet Cong withdrew. The battle resulted in an estimated
40 Viet Cong killed; two Americans, 1 Australian military adviser,
and 57 South Vietnamese defenders also lost their lives. At
a White House ceremony in December 1964, President Lyndon B.
Johnson presented Captain Donlon with the first Medal of Honor
of the Vietnam War

1963 Hopes for peaceful coexistence
with USSR, in US government.^top^
In the light of a deepening ideological
rift between the Soviet Union and China, U.S. officials express
their belief that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev will seek
closer relations with the United States. Unfortunately, the
optimism was somewhat misplaced. Although China and the Soviet
Union announced a serious split in mid-July 1963, Khrushchev's
days in office were numbered. Officials in the U.S. government
watched with tremendous interest the developing rift between
the Soviet Union and China in the early 1960s. The ideological
split centered around the Chinese perception that the Russians
were becoming too "soft" in their revolutionary zeal and too
accommodating to Western capitalist powers. In mid-1963, Chinese
and Soviet representatives met in Moscow to try to mend the
damage. U.S. diplomats were convinced that the rift was irreversible.
As a consequence, they believed Khrushchev would become much
more receptive to better relations with the United States in
order to isolate further the communist Chinese.
Thus, on 06 July 1963, the
New York Times carried several related stories, based on
statements from "responsible" figures in the administration
of President John F. Kennedy, about the hopes for a meaningful
"peaceful coexistence" between the Soviet Union and United States.
Khrushchev himself had coined the term "peaceful coexistence"
in the late 1950s, indicating that the hope for better U.S.-Soviet
relations was not entirely one-sided. Kennedy obviously hoped
to build on these feelings to prepare the way for the success
of arms control talks with the Soviets scheduled for later in
the month. This hope was realized when the Soviet Union and
United States signed a treaty banning the aboveground testing
of nuclear weapons in August 1963. Just a few days after the
newspaper stories concerning improved U.S.-Soviet relations,
the Russians and Chinese officially announced their ideological
split. Any benefits the United States hoped would accrue from
this development in terms of a closer working relationship with
Khrushchev, however, were swept away in 1964 when the Russian
leader was removed from power by more hard-line elements of
the Soviet government. Almost overnight, talk of "peaceful coexistence"
disappeared and the Cold War divisions once again hardened.

1955 Diem says South Vietnam
not bound by Geneva Agreements^top^
South Vietnamese President Ngo
Dinh Diem declares in a broadcast that since South Vietnam had
not signed the Geneva Agreements, South Vietnam was not bound
by them. Although Diem did not reject the "principle of elections,"
he said that any proposals from the communist Viet Minh were
out of the question "if proof is not given us that they put
the higher interest of the national community above those of
communism." The Geneva Conference had begun on 26 April 1954,
to negotiate an end to the First Indochina War between the French
and the Viet Minh forces of Ho Chi Minh. The negotiations resulted
in the signing of a truce on 20 July.
The agreement fixed a provisional
demarcation line roughly along the 17th parallel (which would
eventually be most improperly called the Demilitarized Zone,
DMZ), pending countrywide elections to be held in July 1956.
It also allowed the evacuation of French forces north of that
line, and Viet Minh forces south of it. Freedom of movement
from either zone was allowed for 300 days, and restrictions
were imposed on future military alliances. An International
Control Commission was formed with representatives from India,
Canada, and Poland to supervise implementation of the agreement,
including the scheduled elections. The whole package of agreements
became known as the Geneva Accords.
The agreement was reached over
the objections of South Vietnam, which refused to sign it. Likewise,
the United States did not concur with the accords, but pledged
that it would refrain from use of force or the threat of force
to disturb their provisions. However, United States representatives
declared that the U.S. would look upon renewed aggression in
violation of the agreement "with grave concern." The Geneva
Accords ended the war between the French and Viet Minh, but
set the stage for renewed conflict. When Diem, realizing the
strength of Ho Chi Minh's support in South Vietnam, blocked
the elections that were called for in the accords, the United
States, citing alleged North Vietnamese truce violation, supported
him. No longer able to use the elections as a means to reunify
Vietnam, the communists turned to force of arms to defeat South
Vietnam. This war lasted until 1975, when the North Vietnamese
launched their final offensive. South Vietnam, no longer supported
by the United States, which had departed in 1973, fell to the
communists in 55 days.

1955 Smog
control ^top^
The Federal Air Pollution Control
Act was implemented on this day in 1955, providing federally
allocated funds for research into causal analysis and control
of car-emission pollution. Concern over the effects of air-pollution
had mounted steadily in the U.S. as urban sprawl increased.
The disastrous fog and attendant
high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulate pollution (and
probably also sulfuric acid) that occurred in London in the
second week of December 1952 led to the deaths of more than
4000 people during that week and the subsequent three weeks.
Many, but not all, of the victims already had chronic heart
or lung disease. Prize cattle at an agricultural show also died
in the same period as a result of the air pollution. Though
both the cause and the precise effects of the fog were unclear,
the phenomenon sparked an international concern about the effects
of emissions pollution.
The following year, Dr. Arie
Haagen-Smit discovered the nature of photochemical smog, determining
that nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons combined with ultraviolet
radiation from the sun created smog. He also discovered that
ozone played a key role in the bonding process that created
smog. It was at this time that the U.S. began a rapid shift
from coal as an energy source, replacing it with natural gas.
It would not be until 1960 that
the government specifically addressed car-emissions pollution
as a legal issue, with the Federal Motor Vehicle Act of 1960,
calling for further research and development into the control
of car emissions. The next year, the first automotive emissions
control technology--positive crankcase ventilation (PCV)--was
mandated by the California Motor Vehicle Board. PCV technology
limited hydrocarbon emission by returning blow-by gases from
the crankcase back to a car's cylinders, where they were burned
with fuel and air. In 1963, the first Federal Clean-Air Act
was passed, allocating research money for local and federal
institutions to combat air-pollution.

1942
Frank family hides from Nazis^top^ In Nazi-occupied
Holland, thirteen-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her
family were forced to take refuge in a secret sealed-off area
of an Amsterdam warehouse. The day before, Anne's older sister,
Margot, had received a call-up notice to be deported to a Nazi
"work camp."
Born in Germany on June 12, 1929,
Anne Frank fled to Amsterdam with her family in 1933 to escape
Nazi persecution. In the summer of 1942, with the German occupation
of Holland underway, twelve-year-old Anne began a diary relating
her everyday experiences, her relationship with her family and
friends, and observations about the increasingly dangerous world
around her.
Just a few months later, under
threat of deportation to Nazi concentration camps, the Frank
family was forced into hiding in a secret sealed-off area of
an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years, under the threat
of murder by the Nazi officers patrolling just outside the warehouse,
Anne kept a diary that is marked by poignancy, humor, and insight.
On 4 August 1944, just two months
after the successful Allied landing at Normandy, the Nazi Gestapo
discovered the Frank’s "Secret Annex." Along with another Jewish
family with whom they had shared the hiding place, and two of
the Christians who had helped shelter them, the Franks were
sent to the Nazi death camps. Anne and most of the others had
ended up at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, although
her diary was left behind, undiscovered by the Nazis.
In early 1945, with the Soviet
liberation of Poland underway, Anne was moved with her sister,
Margot, to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.
Suffering under the deplorable conditions of the camp, the two
sisters caught typhus and died in early March, probably on March
12 in the case of Anne..
After the war, Anne’s diary was
discovered undisturbed in the Amsterdam hiding place, and in
1947, was translated into English and published. An instant
bestseller which was eventually translated into over thirty
languages, The Diary of Anne Frank has served as a literary
testament to the six million Jews, including Anne herself, who
were silenced in the Holocaust.

1914 Monday : in the aftermath of the June
28 assassination in Sarajevo of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of
Austria-Hungary and of his wife, Sophia:

Having completed his meeting with Hoyos and Szogyeny, the
Kaiser departs for his annual North Sea cruise. The twenty
day cruise had been planned for months and the Kaiser saw
nothing in events that would cause him to cancel it. Besides
it might appear that something was wrong should the cruise
be cancelled.

1864
Early capture of Hagerstown, Maryland^top^
Confederate General Jubal Early's
troops cross the Potomac River and occupy Hagerstown, Maryland.
Early had sought to threaten Washington, D.C., and thereby relieve
pressure on General Robert E. Lee, who was fighting to keep
Ulysses S. Grant out of Richmond. During the brutal six-week
campaign against Grant in June 1864, Lee was under tremendous
pressure. On 12 June he dispatched Jubal Early to Lynchburg,
in western Virginia, to hold off a Union attack by General David
Hunter. After defeating Hunter, Early was ordered to head down
the Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac. Lee hoped that this threat
to Washington would force Grant to return part of his army to
the capital and protect it from an embarrassing capture by the
Confederates. Lee was inspired by a similar Shenandoah campaign
by Stonewall Jackson in 1862, in which Jackson occupied three
Federal armies in a brilliant military show. However, the circumstances
were different in 1864. Grant now had plenty of men, and Lee
was stretched thin around the Richmond-Petersburg perimeter.
Still, the first part of Early's raid was successful. His force
crossed the Potomac on 06 July and a cavalry brigade under John
McCausland rode into Hagarstown. Early instructed McCausland
to demand $200,000 from the city officials of Hagarstown for
damages caused by Hunter in the Shenandoah Valley, but McCausland
felt the amount was too large, so he asked for $20,000. After
receiving the money, Early's army turned southeast toward Washington.
The Confederates reached the outskirts of the city before being
turned away by troops from Grant's army.

1863 Northern Territory passes from New South Wales to South Australia

1862 Mark Twain begins reporting
in Virginia City^top^
Writing under the name of Mark
Twain, Samuel Clemens begins publishing news stories in the
Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. Born in Missouri in 1835,
Clemens followed a circuitous route to becoming an observer
and writer of the American West. As a young man he apprenticed
as a printer and worked in St. Louis, New York, and Philadelphia.
In 1856, he briefly considered a trip to South America where
he thought he could make money collecting coca leaves. A year
later, he became a riverboat pilot apprentice on the Mississippi
River, and worked on the water for the next four years. In 1861,
Clemens' brother Orion was appointed secretary to the territorial
governor of Nevada. Clemens jumped at the offer to accompany
Orion on his western adventure. He spent his first year in Nevada
prospecting for a gold or silver mine but was no more successful
than the vast majority of would-be miners.
In need of money, he accepted
a job as reporter for a Virginia City, Nevada, newspaper called
The Territorial Enterprise. His articles covering the
bustling frontier-mining town began to appear on this day in
1862. Like many newspapermen of the day, Clemens adopted a pen
name, signing his articles with the name Mark Twain, a term
from his old river boating days. Clemens' stint as a Nevada
newspaperman revealed an exceptional talent for writing. In
1864, he traveled farther West to cover the booming state of
California. Fascinated by the frontier life, Clemens drew on
his western experiences to write one of his first published
works of fiction, the 1865 short story The Celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County. The success of this classic western
tall tale catapulted Clemens out of the West, and he became
a world-hopping journalist for a California newspaper.
In 1869, Clemens settled in Buffalo,
New York, and later in Hartford, Connecticut. All told, Clemens
spent only a little more than five years in the West, and the
majority of his subsequent work focused on the Mississippi River
country and the Northeast. As a result, Clemens can hardly be
defined as a western writer. Still, his 1872 account of his
western adventures, Roughing It, remains one of the most original
and evocative eyewitness accounts of the frontier ever written.
More importantly, even his non-western masterpieces like Tom
Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) reflected a frontier
mentality in their rejection of eastern pretentiousness and
genteel literary conventions.

Deaths
which occurred on a July 06:2002 Abdul Qadir and his son-in-law, by two gunmen firing assault
rifles, in Kabul, at about 12:40. Since the establishing of the new government
in June 2002, Qadir was one of Afghanistan's three Vice-Presidents and
head of the Ministry of Public Works which he was just leaving, his son-in-law
driving. [27 Nov 2001 photo: Qadir, then post-Taliban governor of
the Pashtun province of Nangarhar, at the UN-sponsored Afghan talks ,
in Koenigswinter, Germany, to plan the interim government. >]
2002 Palestinian sources said yesterday that a Palestinian woman and
her two-year-old daughter were killed by IDF gunfire in the Gaza Strip.
A review conducted last night by the IDF division commander in the area,
Col. Yoel Sarik, revealed that there was IDF gunfire in the area at the
time. Whether the mother and child were caught in the gunfire still remains
to determined. According to Palestinian reports, the woman, Randa al-Hindi,
42, and her daughter, Nur, were traveling at 5 A.M. on the road from
Khan Yunis to Gaza, following a visit to relatives. Palestinian sources
said the two were hit by light-weapons fire close to the Sheikh Ajlin
neighborhood south of the city. A conflicting report said the car in
which the two had been traveling had been hit by a tank shell. A third
Palestinian, Subhi Shurab, 40, was killed at the weekend in Khan Yunis,
close to the Katif Bloc settlements. Palestinian sources said the man
was killed by IDF gunfire.2002 Randa al-Hindi, 42, and her daughter, Nur, 2, Palestinians,
by Israeli gunfire or a tank shell, close to the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood
south of Gaza city, as they were traveling at 05:00 on the road from
Khan Yunis to Gaza, following a visit to relatives. 2002 Subhi Shurab, 40, Palestinian, by Israeli army gunfire, in
Khan Yunis, close to the Katif Bloc settlements.
2001
Ramzan Gasayev, puppet administrator of Alkhan-Kala, executed
by Chechen patriots.
Five masked men shot Gasayev at
point-blank range in the evening when he opened the door to
his house. The gunmen left a note saying the execution was revenge
for the death of Chechen patriot field commander Arbi Barayev,
who was killed in a Russian military sweep of Alkhan-Kala the
previous week. Russian officials said Barayev was killed during
an eight-day military operation in which troops surrounded Alkhan-Kala
and searched it for rebels.
This same day a Human Rights Watch
report says that Russian forces in Chechnya have arbitrarily
detained hundreds and possibly thousands of Chechen men in a
new round of sweep operations like the one in Alkhan-Kala. Eyewitnesses
from several villages report torture, ill-treatment and extortion
of the detainees. The present level of arbitrary detentions
is unprecedented. This amounts to collective punishment and
is absolutely unacceptable.2001 Three Russian soldiers in 13 attacks by Chechen patriots
on the occupiers' positions and checkpoints.2001 Six Russian combat policemen when their vehicles hit landmines
in occupied Grozny, Chechnia.2001: 11 persons, by falling tree. Some 120 mostly teenagers at
an outdoor Yiddish music concert at the Château Pourtalès
park, in a northern Strasbourg suburb, took refuge from the rain in a
tent, when, at about 22:00, sudden winds of up to 150 km/h blew a huge
plane tree, similar to a sycamore, down onto the tent. 85 were injured,
17 of them seriously.2000 Some heat victims in Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece,
Romania, as, for the third day, a Saharan air mass pushes temperatures
to records unequalled in 112 years, to as much as 45ºC and some
10ºC above normal. Air conditioning in those countries is not as
common as in the southern US. 2000 Michael Costin, 40, in a coma from having his head pounded
on the floor by the much stronger Thomas Junta, 40, the previous day,
in an argument about their 10-year-old sons hockey practice in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Junta would be tried for this in January 2002, convicted
of involuntary manslaughter on 11 January 2002, and sentenced on 25 January
2002 to 6-to-10 years in prison as asked by the prosecution, the judge
commenting that he would have preferred the maximum, 20 years..

1994 Gary Kildall,
software pioneer, killed in bar brawl
^top^
Gary Kildall, inventor of an
early personal computer operating system, is killed in a brawl
at a biker bar in Monterey, California. Before the development
of the IBM PC and the dominance of MS-DOS, almost all personal
computers ran on CP/M, Kildall's operating system. In 1980,
Kildall rejected an offer from IBM to license his operating
system to run the new IBM PC. Instead, IBM bought a simple operating
system from Bill Gates for $50'000, ensuring Microsoft's future
prosperity.

1971 Louis
Armstrong, 69. in New York
City ^top^
Jazz owes an immeasurable debt
to the innovations of the legendary "Satchmo," . He virtually
taught himself the trumpet, and displayed a musical mastery
in his innovations of early day blues and dixieland--music that
inspired the swing eras of the 1920s and 1930s. Satchmo also
invented "skat," a technique of singing jazz improvisations
as he might play them on his horn. (Hello Dolly)
Louis Armstrong, trompettiste
et chanteur noir étasunien. Louis Armstrong est, avec " Duke
" Ellington et Charlie Parker, un des trois génies reconnus
de la musique de jazz. Alors que le jazz instrumental était
encore proche des fanfares, que l’improvisation sur un thème
donné -- une des caractéristiques essentielles de cet art --
se déployait surtout collectivement et à l’intérieur de cadres
assez étroits, Armstrong inaugura le règne du soliste, donnant
l’exemple, par son imagination créatrice, d’une liberté et d’une
richesse d’expression jusqu’alors inconnues.
De ce fait, l’importance, sur
le plan esthétique, du grand trompettiste et chanteur noir constitue
également un fait historique décisif : d’entreprise collective,
liée à un milieu et à toutes sortes d’alluvions culturelles,
le jazz, grâce à Armstrong, acquiert en effet son unité, sa
dimension d’universalité et ses moyens originaux, à partir desquels
deviendront possibles création et évolution, bref, les apports
successifs des individualités qui jalonnent son histoire.
Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong was
one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. A
world-renowned jazz trumpeter and vocalist, he pioneered jazz
improvisation and the style known as swing. Louis Daniel Armstrong
was born in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, in 1901. He
grew up in poverty and from a young age was interested in music.
In 1912, he was incarcerated in the Colored Waif's Home for
Boys, allegedly for firing a gun into the air on New Year's
Eve. While there, he played cornet in the home's band. Upon
his release, he dedicated himself to becoming a professional
musician and soon was mastering local jazz styles on the cornet.
He attracted the attention of cornetist Joe "King" Oliver, and
when Oliver moved to Chicago in 1919 he took his place in trombonist
Kid Ory's band, a leading group in New Orleans at the time.
He later teamed up with pianist Fate Marable and performed on
riverboats that traveled the Mississippi.
In 1922, King Oliver invited
Armstrong to Chicago to play second cornet in his Creole Jazz
Band, and Armstrong made his first recordings with Oliver the
following year. In 1924, he moved to New York City and demonstrated
his emerging improvisational style in the Fletcher Henderson
Orchestra. In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago and formed
his own band--the Hot Five--which included Kid Ory, clarinetist
Johnny Dodds, and pianist Lil' Hardin, Armstrong's second wife.
This band, which later grew into
the Hot Seven, recorded some of the seminal pieces in the history
of jazz, including "Savoy Blues," "Potato Head Blues," and "West
End Blues." In these recordings, Armstrong abandoned the collective
improvisation of New Orleans-style jazz and placed the emphasis
on individual soloists. He switched from cornet to trumpet during
this time and played the latter with unprecedented virtuosity
and range. In the 1926 recording "Heebie Jeebies," he popularized
"scat singing," a style in which jazz vocalists sing musical
lines of nonsensical syllables in emulation of instrumental
improvisation. His joyous voice, both coarse and exuberant,
was one of the most distinctive in popular music.
In 1929, Armstrong returned to
New York City and made his first Broadway appearance. His recordings,
many of which were jazz interpretations of popular songs, were
international hits, and he toured the United States and Europe
with his big band. His music had a major effect on the swing
and big band sound that dominated popular music in the 1930s
and '40s. A great performer, Armstrong appeared regularly on
radio and in American films, including Pennies from Heaven (1936),
Cabin in the Sky (1943), and New Orleans (1947). In 1947, he
formed a smaller ensemble, the All-Stars, which he led until
1968.
Louis Armstrong had many nicknames,
including Satchmo, short for "Satchelmouth"; "Dippermouth";
and "Pops." Because he spread jazz around the world through
his extensive travels and hit songs, many called him "Ambassador
Satch." Although in declining health in his later years, he
continued to perform until his death on 06 July 1971.

1964 Rafael Cansinos Assens, literato español.

1964: 154 Vietcong attackers
and 60 defenders of Camp Nam Dong^top^
Captain Donlon and his Special
Forces team are manning Camp Nam Dong, a mountain outpost near
the borders of Laos and North Vietnam. Just before two o'clock
in the morning, hordes of Viet Cong attack the camp. Donlon
is shot in the stomach, but he stuffs a handkerchief into the
wound, cinches up his belt, and keeps fighting. He is wounded
three more times, but he continues fighting--manning a mortar,
throwing grenades at the enemy, and refusing medical attention.
The battle ends in early morning;
154 Viet Cong were killed during the battle. Two Americans died
and seven were wounded. Over 50 South Vietnamese soldiers and
Nung mercenaries were also killed during the action.
The battle over, Donlon allows
himself to be evacuated to a hospital in Saigon. He would spend
over a month there before rejoining the surviving members of
his Special Forces team; they would complete their six-month
tour in Vietnam in November and fly home together. On 5 December
1964, in a White House ceremony, with Donlon's nine surviving
team members watching, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents
him with the Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary
heroism and intrepidity at the risk of his own life above and
beyond the call of duty." Donlon, justifiably proud of his team,
tells the president, "The medal belongs to them, too." It is
the first Medal of Honor awarded to a U.S. serviceman for action
in Vietnam

1944, 167
persons in the Hartford Circus fire.^top^
In Hartford, Connecticut, a fire
breaks out under the big top of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum
and Bailey Circus, killing 167 people and injuring 682. Two-thirds
of those who perish are children. The cause of the fire was
not known, but it spread at incredible speed, racing up the
canvas of the circus tent. Scarcely before the 8000 spectators
inside the big top could react, patches of burning canvas began
falling on them from above, and a stampede for the exits began.
Many were trapped under fallen canvas, but most were able to
rip through it and escape. However, after the tent's ropes burned
and its poles gave way, the whole burning big top came crashing
down, consuming those who remained inside. Within ten minutes
it was over, and some one hundred children and their sixty adult
escorts were dead or dying.
An investigation discovered that
the tent had undergone a treatment with flammable paraffin thinned
with three parts of gasoline to make it waterproof. Ringling
Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus eventually agreed to pay
five million dollars in compensation, and several of the organizers
were convicted on manslaughter charges. In 1950, in a late development
in the case, Robert D. Segee of Circleville, Ohio, confessed
to starting the Hartford circus fire. Segee claimed that he
had been an arsonist since the age of six, and that an apparition
of an Indian on a flaming horse often visited him and urged
him to set fires. On November 2, 1950, Segee was sentenced to
two consecutive terms of twenty-two years in prison, the maximum
penalty in Ohio at the time.

1944 Georges
Mandel, 59, French patriot, executed
^top^
Georges Mandel, France's minister
of colonies and vehement opponent of the 1940 armistice with
Germany, is executed in a wood outside Paris by collaborationist
French. Born into a prosperous Jewish family (his given name
was Louis-Georges Rothschild, though no relation to the banking
family) in 1885, Mandel's political career began at age 21 as
a member of the personal staff of French Premier Georges Clemenceau.
He went on to serve in the National Assembly from 1919 to 1924,
and then again from 1928 to 1940.
Although a political conservative,
he fell into conflict with fellow conservatives over their too-often
pro-German sympathies, especially during the two world wars.
In 1940, he was transferred to the Ministry of the Interior
by then French Premier Paul Reynaud, with whom he shared the
conviction that no armistice should be made with the German
invaders, and that the battle should continue, even if only
from France's colonies in Africa.
After the resignation of Reynaud
and the establishment of the Pétain government in Vichy,
Mandel sailed to Morocco, where he was arrested and sent back
to France and imprisoned. He was then handed over to the Germans,
and put in concentration camps in Oranienburg and Buchenwald.
On July 4, 1944, he was shipped back to Paris, where the French
collaborationist security police, the Milice, took him out to
a wood and shot him. As he was being handed over to his countrymen
by the German SS, he said: "To die is nothing. What is sad is
to die without seeing the liberation of the country and the
restoration of the Republic."

Henry was not satisfied with two wives: his six wives were,
successively,
1. Catherine of Aragon (married at age 23 in 1509, gave birth
on 18 February 1816 to the future queen Mary I, Henry left her
in July 1531, and got the Anglican Church started for it to
annul his marriage, which it did on 23 May 1533. She died on
07 January 1536 of natural causes),
2. Anne Boleyn (married at age 26 on 25 January 1533, gave birth
on 07 September 1533 to the future queen Elizabeth I, was beheaded
on 19 May 1536 for adultery, almost certainly falsely alleged,
while Henry was guilty of same).
3. Jane Seymour (married at age 27 on 30 May 1536, gave birth
on 12 October 1537 to Henry's successor, Edward VI, and died
of natural causes on 24 October 1537)),
4. Anne of Cleves, (married at age 24 on 06 January 1940, marriage
annulled by Anglican Church on 09 July 1540, she died on 16
July 1557 of natural causes)
5. Catherine Howard, (married on 28 July 1540, proclaimed queen
on 08 August 1540, beheaded on 13 February 1542 for treason,
namely her premarital affairs)
6. Catherine Parr. (married at age 31 on 12 July 1543, Henry
died 28 January 1547, she remarried and died on 07 September
1548, shortly after giving birth)
English Catholic theologian Thomas More is beheaded for refusing
to recognize Henry VIII as supreme head of the Church of England,
which had broken with the Roman Catholic Church so that Henry
VIII could get wife number 2 (which he ordered beheaded less
than a year after Thomas More, so as to make room for wife number
3)..

Births which occurred on
a July 06:1946 George W. Bush, Republican governor of Texas, elected US
President in 2000 by one vote in the Supreme Court, but not by a majority
of the US voters.

1935 Lhamo
Dondrub Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso,
to a peasant family in Takster, Tibet.
^top^
In 1937, the child would be declared
the reincarnation of a great Buddhist spiritual leader and named
the 14th Dalai Lama. His leadership
rights were exercised by a regency until 1950. That same year,
he was forced to flee by the Chinese but negotiated an agreement
and returned to lead Tibet for the next eight years.
In 1959, an unsuccessful Tibetan
nationalist uprising led to a crackdown by China, and the Dalai
Lama fled to Punjab, India, where he established his democratic
government in exile. In 1989, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for
his commitment to the nonviolent liberation of Tibet.
In 1998, his book The Art
of Happiness, written with psychiatrist Howard Cutler, became
a bestseller. His next book, Ethics for the New Millennium
made the bestseller lists in August 1999, giving him two titles
in the Top 10. Both books offered guidance for happy, simple
living. Although drawing on Buddhist teachings, the books argue
that spiritual faith is not necessary to live a contented, peaceful
life.
His Holiness the 14th the Dalai
Lama Tenzin Gyatso, is the head of state and spiritual leader
of the Tibetan people. He was born Lhamo Dhondrub on 6 July
1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet.
Born to a peasant family, His Holiness was recognized at the
age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation
of his predecessor the 13th Dalai Lama, and thus an incarnation
Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion. The Dalai Lamas are
the manifestations of the Bodhisattva (Buddha) of Compassion,
who chose to reincarnate to serve the people. Lhamo Dhondrub
was, as Dalai Lama, renamed Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe
Tenzin Gyatso - Holy Lord, Gentle Glory, Compassionate, Defender
of the Faith, Ocean of Wisdom. Tibetans normally refer to His
Holiness as Yeshe Norbu, the Wishfulfilling Gem or simply Kundun
- The Presence. The enthronement ceremony took place on February
22, 1940 in Lhasa,Tensing
Gyatso, Dalai Lama, líder religioso y político del Tíbet

1878 Armas Eino Leopold Lönnbohm
("Eino Leino"), Paltamo, Finland (then part
of Russia) ^top^
Prolific and versatile poet, a
master of Finnish poetic forms, the scope of whose talent ranges
from the visionary and mystical to topical novels, pamphlets,
and critical journalism.
Leino studied at the University
of Helsinki and worked as a journalist, principally as literary
and dramatic critic on the liberal newspapers Päivälehti and
Helsingin Sanomat. The last part of his life he spent in bohemian
excess. He translated into Finnish a number of world classics,
including Dante's Divina Commedia. In his first collection
of poems, Maaliskuun lauluja (1896, "Songs of March"),
Leino's mood was gay and his style free and melodic; he was
influenced by his compatriot J.L. Runeberg, the German poet
Heinrich Heine, and Finnish folk songs.
But gradually his mood darkened,
and he turned to poems of confession and solitude, patriotic
poems about the period of Russian oppression, desolate ballad
themes, and mythical motifs. The last dominate Helkavirsiä
(1903-16; Whitsongs, 1978), Leino's main work, in which he revives
the metre and spirit of folklore. Other poetry includes Talviyö
(1905, "Winter Night"), Halla (1908, "Frost"), and a
historical poem Simo Hurtta (1904-19; "Simo the Bloodhound").
He also wrote plays, collected in Naamioita (1905-11,
"Masks"), contemporary novels, animal fables, and essays. His
work is uneven, but his best poems are among the finest Finnish
lyrics. Leino died on January 10, 1926.